My joint article with NHS consultant @drcarolinej looks at how changing migration is taking us away from our target to eliminate HIV in the UK by 2030.
We argue for a new HIV strategy, including making testing a visa requirement for people from high prevalence countries. The sudden reversal in the declining trend since 2005 is driven by people born outside the UK, notably from high prevalance countries, particularly in Africa:

Absolutely disgraceful attempt to smear the police by Runnymede Trust claiming Kaba death was "racist state violence".

As well as refusing to accept the court verdict they produce a TOTALLY misleading statistic - chosen to whip up conflict (1/8) They quote a figure for deaths "following police contact *since 1990* - which makes it sound like the police are killing loads of people. But the IOPC give some examples of what this category really involves: (2/8)

Today’s Industrial Strategy Green Paper looks pretty similar to the 2017 Industrial Strategy Green Paper & the 2021 Levelling Up White Paper. There's not much new in it.

Thats fine, but it also repeats some Westminster Received Wisdom I think is questionable. Quick 🧵 It claims: “For the eight largest cities outside London combined, the gap between actual and potential productivity could be worth £47 billion.” It includes this chart which you have probably seen before:

My previous thread looked at how we got to having the most expensive power in Europe, and why things will get exponentially worse with Ed Miliband's dash foe a zero carbon grid. This thread looks at the impact on industry and the poorer parts of the UK 🧵 Our framework is all about domestic UK emissions (0.77% world emissions) rather than developing the technologies that can solve the global problem. Our high energy costs have just shunted production from the UK to dirtier countries, and we have imported their products.

The UK is being hit by a wave of industrial closures from Port Talbot to Scunthorpe to Grangemouth where energy policy is a major factor.

I have two longreads out today (link in bio) on what's gone wrong. Quick thread: UK policy is:
1) Reducing domestic emissions,
2) By reducing energy use,
3) By making energy more expensive,
4) Focussing on growing renewables and biofuels,
5) Hoping that other countries will follow in time, but by ‘leading by example’ rather than requiring burden-sharing.

My new piece looks at the hard-to explain variations in train ticket prices in Britain. Why do people travelling similar distances pay massively different amounts?

I have crunched a load of data and the results are baffling.
(1/7) Why is a travelcard from East Grinstead (£82.90) nearly half the price of one from Tunbridge Wells (£145.70), despite commuters travelling similar distances?

Why twice as much per mile from Swindon (£4.03 a mile) compared to Grantham? (£1.99) Or Leicester vs Kings Lynn? (2/7)

I have a new piece up, based on information I've obtained from Freedom of Information requests to HMRC.

1) New data on migrants earnings suggests the median earnings of non-EU migrants under the new system is much lower than previous migrants. The 2 biggest groups are below: 2) The new system made the system more restrictive for EU nationals but much less selective for non-EU nationals. The result has been record immigraiton overall. The number of employments of EU nationals has declined & the number for non-EU nationals has increased:

I have a new (data-heavy!) article on migration & ethnicity which includes:
- The "missing million" difference in migration figures
- Interactive maps for parliamentary constituencies
- An in-depth examination of changes in schools from a WPQ on DFE data

neilobrien.co.uk/p/migration-an… The theme of the piece is that the effect of migration and ethnic change varies massively between different places and people. For some people, immigration hasn’t really changed their world. For others, it has absolutely transformed it.

My new article looks at how changes put in place by Boris Johnson both massively increased overall immigration, and also took us further away from being the 'grammar school of the west' (1/10)

almondtree.substack.com/p/legal-migrat… The UK has shifted from mainly EU migration to mainly non-EU migration (2/10)

There is a lot on this super-timely @ukonward mega polling report - things I thought were interesting included: (1/7)

ukonward.com/wp-content/upl… Why voters left - scandals, being too liberal on migration and (for some) the economy (2/7)

Energy Thread:
1 reason energy package will need an element of direct help is massive variation in energy cost WITHIN different income groups.

Chart below (which is old) shows huge variations, and all these costs will now go up a lot, making absolute variation even bigger (1/7) In the old example above, the median household in the bottom spending decile was spending 14% of post housing income on energy, but the top quartile of same group were spending 23% and top tenth safely over a third. (2/7)

The latest in my series of pieces on challenges for the new PM looks at migration. Quick thread:

Since '97 there’s been unprecedented net migration to the UK. England and Wales’ population rose just 1.2 million from 1971 to 1991, but 7.6 million over the last twenty years (1/13) Many Leave voters assumed Brexit would reduce immigration. But since the referendum gross migration has increased not reduced. (2/13)

*Networks of disinformation: a thread.*

The covid-sceptic campaign group @pcrclaims have deleted all their tweets from before the last couple of days.

They are trying to cover their tracks & look more 'respectable' by deleting stuff like the below (from 16 December). 👇 But they still claim Covid is a "pseudo epidemic".

Their website features Clare Craig saying:

"it is all based around false positive test results, when there is no real disease behind it, and I think that's what we are seeing here." (2/3)

pcrclaims.co.uk/video/Clare-Cr…

Another top covid-sceptic, Dr Clare Craig, has deleted all her tweets from last year.

Unfortunately for her attempts to cover her tracks... Google cached them, so we can take a look at how she’s used her professional qualifications to spread dangerous disinformation.

A thread: On 18 October she claimed in a now-deleted tweet:
“No-one is going to die of it (only with it).Flu diagnoses have been replaced by COVID. This happens when you overtest people dying of respiratory failure until you get the result you are looking for.”

How to handle the Covid pandemic is the most important issue facing MPs right now.

So I wonder why Julia objects to me questioning the claims of her fellow covid-sceptics?

Here's a thread on some of the things *she* has claimed:

https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1349804968270827520

"Every journalist and MP should be asking the PM & Health Secretary: why are we using a Covid-19 test that has 90% false positives?"

Twitter, 20 September 2020

As the UK tragically hits a record number of Covid-19 deaths, Covid-sceptic-in-chief @toadmeister appears to have deleted all his tweets from last year.

That's not surprising. Here are some of the things he claimed over the last year - a thread. "Should we be worried about the uptick in cases? Almost certainly not. It’s due to recent increases in testing capacity... Given the over-sensitivity of the PCR test, the rise in new cases is telling us just how many people have had Covid-19 in the past"

Telegraph, 7 September

>We are facing a major crisis<

The current wave of the Coronavirus crisis is in many ways *worse* than the original spring surge. Quick thread: The proportion of people tested who test positive has gone screaming up everywhere. Data up to 29th December:

The Daily Telegraph leader today says: "Let's admit what we got wrong in 2020, and shake things up in 2021".

Great idea. I have some suggestions. How about:

telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/0… ...The Telegraph publishing this piece by Toby Young in June, which claimed: "there will be no “second spike” – not now, and not in the autumn either. The virus has melted into thin air. It’s time to get back to normal."

telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/2…

The below is wrong at several levels. In England and Wales, 65,000 aged 65+ have died with it, plus over 7,400 working age people. Many had prior medical conditions, but we don't hold their lives to be valueless because Britain isn't a fascist state.

https://twitter.com/PaulEmbery/status/1342780150358962176

About one in ten had no prior conditions. But having a prior condition doesn't mean you are about to die! EG about 10,000 had diabetes. Theresa May has it and was Prime Minister! A study by Glasgow Uni suggested the average victim would have had another ten years - that's a lot.

There are good reasons to be much more concerned about the new wave 3, than about wave 2 - a quick thread. Here's the relationship between the number of cases in England among those aged 60+ and the number of people hospitalised by Covid - the one follows the other with a lag.

My piece below looks at Sweden. Recent days have seen Sweden’s Nordic neighbours Finland and Norway offer emergency medical assistance as Stockholm’s hospitals overflow & the King make an unprecedented criticism of the failed strategy. What went wrong?

newstatesman.com/world/europe/2… Sweden started with massive advantages: more people living alone than anywhere else and a sparse population. But it ended up with death rates 9 and 10 times that of neighbours Finland and Norway